2023 and Beyond: ET-MGR#1
The Makings of a Double Vision:
Stories
can be short little retreats unto themselves, they can also be puzzle
pieces to a larger picture that might not reveal their connections
completely as you look at their interesting details and colors. I have
ridden through all sorts of stories and fortunately have retained a
comfortable armchair to appreciate this and reflect. As my mother
always reminded us kids, you have your arms and your legs and much to be
grateful for.
Once again I am seeing puzzle pieces coming together. Life's surprizes and the mystery of where energy and
direction come from motivates me to slowly and steadily move forward.
What is this picture, this vision, how did it come together. Here are
some stories and images to lay out this chapter before you. As with
most endeavors, who knows how this will proceed or resolve?
1. Eiffel Tower Then and Now: 1887-2023
The World Exposition Paris 1889: In
1884 the French government decided it needed something spectacular for
their 1889 World's Fair. A contest of ideas was held and Gustave
Eiffel's design for a 300 meter tall tower prevailed. The Eiffel
Company was a large industrial engineering firm that built bridges,
factory and mining operations and various buildings and public works.
The Eiffel Engineering Company built the framework for the Statue of
Liberty as well.
The building of the tower began near the banks of the river Seine on Les Champs de Mars in Paris January 1887.
It was completed in record time March 1889 for the opening of the Paris
World's Fair. Immediately many thousands of people visited it, it
became one of the most sought after destinations of all time. Soon
after it was erected the radio was invented and the top of the tower
served very well for an antenna too, that calmed down the detractors of
the new skyline addition. For over forty years the Eiffel tower was
the tallest man made structure on earth.
The tower was built of iron girders and lattice works,
hot-riveted together on site by blacksmiths. Stairways lead up to the
top which passed through Platform One at 187 feet high where there were
four beautiful 500 seat restaurants, today only one, the Jules Verne.
There were also several large elevators that carried visitors to the
dining platform and up to the top. The view of the city was
spectacular, a sight predating aerial viewing from airplanes by many
decades. This iron lattice tower was built to the highest engineering and artistic
standards of the Belle Epoch and Art Nouveau periods and to this day
remains unique among all of the tall structures built by humans.
For more information visit:
CLICK HERE FOR: Official French Information Site
CLICK HERE FOR: Wikipedia Article
dimensions:
Modern day Eiffel Tower with antennas: 1083 feet (330 meters) tall.
2. The Last Carousel: MGR #8 Moves On,
I happen to be a fifth generation carouselmaker, by birth but also by raw
slow workshop/studio experience and wonderful operations at fairs. By
necessity I'm a regular everyday carpenter and boat repair guy
too, that usually pays the bills unless the occasional carousel gig
arises. I have built ten carousels over the past 40 years, all scattered around the Western Hemisphere north of Panama. Number 8
was my long time personal machine which I fine tuned and played with
regularly. It was twenty feet in diameter, hand crank or electric
powered, had a great ring catching game with music and carried 15
riders. I created and rotated a regular change of animals and chariots
to fly around on it. It had become my pet carousel. Nevertheless, this
portable model was becoming too much work for me, at 70+ years, to
attend to even though once up it was very fun to operate. We all had a
blast, riders and operator as well.
I sold my dear carousel November 1, 2021: After
a great neighborhood Halloween operation which the prospective buyer
observed, the carousel was sold, dismantled and moved out the next day.
A great relief and disbelief, yet there I was, carousel-less. It seemed
OK for a while and I explored activities and jobs I thought I'd enjoy
and settle into. After a while I increasingly missed my carousel
activities. I knew how to make and operate them and I knew I liked it
and did it with ease. Beginning in the back of my mind I started
wondering how I would get my hands on another carousel. I considered
trying to buy one of my old machines from an owner interested in selling,
didn't happen.
Community projects and busy workshops are wonderful:
Well, wherever I was headed and whatever was going to be made, in this
day and age it was going to be a new paradigm, we need a lot of those.
So that's where I setup my mental camp, enjoy the ride, explore life,
keep my eye out for the pieces I might need to put together my new, as
yet undefined, hybrid carousel. Just like the automobile industry,
things really need to change in the carousel industry. Of course I am a
very small player, hardly even a small town bicycle maker.
Nevertheless I trusted something would emerge. It had to, that is what
I knew and did, and kids loved to ride them and everyone loved to
operate them. Something will happen.
Something different and intriguing and taking our changing world into consideration:
It's still not clear to me where this is all headed. I hold close to
the poco a poco school of operation, baby steps. Something I know is a
neutral but also key factor is tools, that I will keep in mind as I
feel this out. Access and availability to tools and people who know
something about using them or are interested to learn is crucial.
Why?:
Children and carousels and the simple joy that combination makes will
be with us as long as we humans remain viable. The knowledge and skill
to make these centuries old devices must continue and be passed on to
the next generations. Having the hand skills and workshops to build
these rides is a healthy occupation that can be highly appreciated. The
social and manual dexterity skills of making carousels is rewarding in several ways and riding a
carousel with the ring catching game
is a strong childhood character builder. Aside from communication methods
such as the internet or phones there is nothing electronic or digital
about any aspect of this endeavor, a respite from the ever present
modern digital world, a joyful return to analog times.
3. Unusual Baja Visit: Wind-water sports and some desert background depth,
My daughter Sophia and I drove her van down to La Ventana, Baja
California Sur, Mexico in November 2022. She was looking forward to
some good wing-foiling there. It was a spontaneously planned adventure
into an area we had both visited previously but hadn't seen
enough of yet. It's a long drive on a very narrow virtually
shoulderless road, up, down, across and around amazing desert
landscapes. This long mountainous peninsula stretches from the border
of California south until it dives down into the Pacific Ocean at Cabo
San Lucas.
This trek goes through a rich geographical and
biological wonderland separating the Gulf of California (aka The Sea of
Cortez) from the Pacific Ocean. The distances between towns and gas
stations are long, so it requires a special style of dedicated driving
and strategic stop-overs. Our stop-overs were unique and rewarding.
After a big rest stop at the oasis of San Ignacio we drove on to Santa
Rosalia. At first this appears to be a rough industrial town and
commercial harbor. But when you go deeper into it you find an unusual
style of town layout unlike most other towns in Mexico. I knew there
was a French bakery in town from when I visited long ago with my
parents. We found that and the Eiffel church I had vaguely remembered
too.
Until reading the information plaque on the church
at that moment I never knew the bigger picture. In 1884, around the
same time the Eiffel Engineering Company was entering the contest for
making the monument for the Paris World's Fair, they were also
constructing the buildings and machinery for a large copper mine in
Santa Rosalia. The town was built up in the French colonial style, not
the regular Spanish/Mexican style found throughout Mexico. After
displaying a beautiful prefab iron-framed church the company designed
and built at the foot of the freshly erected Eiffel Tower in Paris it
was shipped to Santa Rosalia in 1897 where it was erected and still
stands today in excellent condition, La Iglesia de Santa Bárbara.
Further down the road to Loretto:
Loretto is the quiet once regional capital, lying flatly on the coast
halfway down the peninsula. Beautiful trees line the streets and it has
many well cared for buildings, houses, restaurants, hotels and shops.
One of the local curiosity shops we came upon had some unusual looking
kid's sized ridable horses out front. I recognized the Saguaro cactus
skeleton sections used for the bodys, necks and heads. With a little
improvement these types of animals could easily be used on a carousel.
The cactus skeleton is a lacework, similar to the Eiffel Tower's
lattice, only they are made by nature. These skeletons are light and
strong, the cactus they come from live hundreds of years then leave
these skeletons behind when they die. Baja has huge areas covered with
these cacti as well as several other unusual types of cactus depending
on the region.
The windsport town of La Ventana is surrounded by cactus and a windy bay:
We hung out in La Ventana for over a week. Great winds for Sophia's
winging, warm waters for my occasional swims. I had a relaxing vacation
there, walking the beach or reading a good book and also researching
the stories about that church in Santa Rosalia we visited and then onto
the whole history and construction of the Eiffel Tower. Sitting there
by the beach, connected to the internet, I was reading about a daring
and magnificent construction and playing with sketching its attractive
shapes and visual perspectives.
We
wanted to visit the old town of San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas on
the beginning of our loop headed back up north to California:
Walking under the Dias de los Muertos banners crisscrossing the sunset
colored streets of San Jose Sophia and I stumbled into the courtyard of
a group of art galleries. There were small lit up waterfalls and music
giving atmosphere to the half dozen huge megafauna steel sculptures
placed about the courtyard, the smaller pieces were inside a nearby
gallery. These megafauna sculptures were intricately made from
thousands of machine gears and parts solidly welded together to a
relatively smooth surface and then painted with a thick translucent
epoxy metal paint in many strong colors. Quite an awesome sight.
Mexican creativity and use of colors always amazes me:
There are so many handcrafts still going strong in Mexico. No matter
where you go you will find useful and artistic items being produced by
the locals from local materials. The variety is truly endless and
inspiring. I was inspired. Slowly all of the ingredients, the amazing
things I recently saw and learned along our long road trip, combined
with the skills I have practiced making carousels the past forty years
began to come together in my mind. Sketches I made and played with
reconfirmed the feasibility of this vision that I couldn't get out of
my head. A steel lattice centerpole and cactus lacework animals could
be made and used for a twenty foot (6m) diameter 15 rider hand-cranked
carousel, made in Mexico or the USA. Fabrication venue undecided,
depends on where the most appreciation and energy lies.
4. Black Bamboo Maquette for a Bigger View: Pieces Cooking into another Baja Bouillabaisse,
Even little old Port Townsend, Washington has its bamboo patches
scattered around, they tend to sprout up in the warmer sunnier areas.
While visiting at a friend's house up on a warmer hill a neighbor
passed by and mentioned that she had a big patch of black bamboo
growing out of control on the side of her property that needed to be
removed. I offered to do a heavy trimming in exchange for the bamboo
canes, she agreed. This bamboo was strong and dense, 12 to 15 feet (3-4 meters) tall
and one or more inches (2.5cm) in diameter, wonderful working material for
something. This was a couple of years ago. I took three cartop loads of
bamboo home and neatly piled them into my trusty boneyard. What to use
them for I wasn't sure at the time, there are many options, doorway
curtains, hanging racks, tool handles, privacy screens, etc.
Making a 1/80th scale version of the Eiffel Tower was not on my radar:
I pulled out four nice bamboo canes and trimmed them to 12 foot
lengths. I laid out two crisscrossed boards on the floor with the
1/80th scale tower corners marked out. Fortunately this scale was just
under the maximum height of the peak of my workshop ceiling and a tower
would fit in. After pulling these long black canes into position
and spreading out the legs to the corners of the base I now had a
tower-like object in the middle of my workshop. I stood back and looked
at it, speechless, I saw the full impact of that unusual yet natural
looking shape. Right then I knew it was time to zero in on the design,
dismantle that quickie model and rebuild from the ground up a complete
1/80th scale maquette of the Eiffel Tower. I call it a maquette because
the most amazing aspect of this design other than it is able to squeeze
into my workshop is that the footprint of the base and height of the
tower mimic precisely the same dimensions of my regular carousel center
poles. Eiffel designed a very strong and stable lattice tower so why
can't this same design scaled down for my purposes not work? I will
dive deeper into giving it a go.
That cold and snowy December-January window became my bamboo cutting and fitting dreamtime:
Using a very nice small Japanese pull saw I cut and fitted many shiny
black bamboo puzzle pieces together under the center ridge of my
workshop. Outside I could see fuffy white fields and gentle snow
falling, inside it was a warm 52 degrees and busy with cutting,
screwing and heat-bending bamboo. Like all projects worth doing it took
a bit longer to complete than I had imagined. Doing some painting on
some of the wood parts succeeded in showing off the bamboo and giving
the tower more life.
Where can I put this maquette while I figure out how to proceed with the possibility of making a steel version?:
That question has been difficult to answer, as much as it's an
interesting piece its home or temporary placement seem elusive. For the
moment it's semi-dismantled and stored in my outdoor workshed. In the
meantime I borrowed a seldomly used MIG gas-wirefeed welder from a
boatyard friend so I could simply make a few odds and ends out of #3
(3/8") rebar. Ended up making an Eiffel Tower inspired table base that
now needs a nice wooden slab to go on top of it. I'm guessing if I make
a full sized 1/80th scale center pole tower I'd use #4 (1/2", 1.25cm) rebar for
the main frame and then #3 and 1/4" rod for the lattice work.
I also hope to get my hands on some cactus skeletons:
There will be a bit of a learning curve with this but I don't see any
big issues using cactus skeleton sections for making carousel animals.
They will be different yet also totally recognizable and strong as a
ridable piece.
Sharing the skill sets and design with others is an important aspect of where this project might be headed:
Completing a carousel is a big deal. Finding the correct site for it is
crucial and needs: access, safety, community & business
integration. Maybe it's something that
can be done with a small town or village as a hands-on, simple
materials, local production community project. Something that will
enhance local business as well as education and amusement in a simple
enjoyable and artistic, non-digital fashion. Time will tell, there is a
need
out there for sure, the kids know this quite clearly. Until ET-MGR#1 is
completed and sited and
delivering its energy to the community we won't know exactly how big
this need is. Stay tuned to read the next chapter and find out. One
thing for sure, poco a poco, slowly shall we go. CLICK HERE FOR: Project Overview Outline
Bill receiving messages coming through this San Ignacio Saguaro:
First Message:
"Find interested community and possible site for
carousel and pavilion to underpin the success of the project." "Then
find someone to help with internet based crowd funding campaign such as
Kickstarter or Indigogo."
Second message: "Make a small operating model of an Eiffel Tower Carousel"; here is the YouTube video of it spinning.
